Small Favor (24 page)

We found Ivy standing in front of one of the sea otter habitats, dressed much more warmly and practically this time, and carrying a small backpack. She was watching two otters chase each other around the habitat, and smiling.

Kincaid stopped in his tracks when he saw that. Just to see what he’d do, I tried to step past him. He shot me a look like he’d murder me if I tried to interrupt her, and my opinion of him went up a notch. I eased back and waited. No skin off my teeth to let the girl watch the otters for a minute.

It had been hard sometimes, when I was a kid, after my magic had started coming in. I’d felt weird and different—alone. It had gradually distanced me from the other kids. But Ivy had never had the luxury of belonging, even temporarily. From what I understood, she’d been the Archive since she was born, fully aware and stuffed full of knowledge from the time she’d opened her eyes. I couldn’t even imagine how hideous
that
would be.

Hell, the more I learned as I got older, the more I wished I were ignorant again. Well. Innocent, anyway. I remembered what it was like, at least.

Ivy had never been innocent.

I could let her smile at sea otters. You bet.

A shadow moved behind me, and I willed myself not to be creeped out. I turned and saw the two dolphins from the tank above cruise by, observing us again. The huge tanks contained observation windows running the whole length of the second-level gallery, so you could see the cute things on one side, and ogle the homely dolphins and the caviar whales on the other.

From down here you could also see the far wall of the big tank, which was a curved wall of glass that faced the open waters of Lake Michigan. That always seemed a little sadistic to me. I mean, here were animals whom nature had equipped to roam the open vastness of the deep blue sea, being kept in a mere three million gallons or so of water. Bad enough to do that to them without giving them a window seat onto all that open water too.

Or maybe it wasn’t. I hear it kind of sucks to be a whale or a dolphin in the open ocean these days, given the state of the fishing industry.

“I guess they’re looking at a can one way or another,” I muttered.

“Hmmm?” Kincaid said.

“Nothing.”

Ivy let out her breath in a satisfied sigh a moment later as the otters vanished into their den. Then she turned toward us and blinked. “Oh,” she said. Her cheeks colored slightly, and for a moment she looked very much like a young girl. “Oh.” She smoothed wrinkles that didn’t exist in her trousers, nodded at Kincaid, and said, “Yes?”

Kincaid nodded toward me. “Local law enforcement wants a representative present to observe. Dresden’s supporting it.”

She took that in for a moment. “Sergeant Murphy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I see.” She frowned. When she spoke, her tone was careful, as if she was considering each word before she spoke it. “Speaking as arbiter, I have no objection, provided both parties involved in the parley give their assent.”

“Right,” Kincaid said. He turned and started walking.

I nodded to Ivy, who returned the gesture. Then I turned and hurried to catch up to Kincaid. “So?” I asked him as we climbed the stairs.

“So,” he said, “let’s go talk to Nicodemus.”

Kincaid led me down the way from the Oceanarium and out to the main entry hall. It’s another grandiose collection of shining stone floor and towering Corinthian columns, arranged around a huge tank the size of a roller rink. It’s full of salt water and coral and seaweed and all kinds of tropical fish. Sometimes there’s a diver with a microphone built into his or her mask feeding the little sharks and fish and talking to gawking tourists. Diffused light floods in through an enormous, triangular-paneled cupola overhead.

The recent snow had blackened the panes of the cupola and drifted up over most of the glass front doors, so the only light in the room came from the little colored lights in the huge tank. Fish glided through the tank like wraiths, the odd light casting sinister shades over their scales, and their shadows drifted disembodied over the walls of the room, magnified by the distance and the glass walls of the aquarium.

It was eerie as hell.

One of the shadows drew my attention as some instinct picked out a strong, subtle sense of menace about it. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that this particular shadow disturbed me because it was human, and moving in a perfect, gliding pace around the wall, behind the shadow of one of the tank’s small but genuine sharks—even though the man who cast the shadow was standing perfectly still.

Nicodemus turned from contemplating the fish swimming in the tank so that I could see the outline of his profile against the softly colored lights. His teeth gleamed orange-red in the light of the nearest underwater lamp.

I stopped myself from taking an involuntary step back, but just barely.

“It is a metaphor,” he said quietly. He had a good voice, mellow and surprisingly deep. “Look at them. Swimming. Eating. Mating. Hunting, killing, fleeing, hiding, each to its nature. All of them so different. So alien to one another. Their world in constant motion, always changing, always threatening, challenging.” He moved one arm, sweeping it in a wider gesture. “They cannot know how fragile it is, or that they are constantly surrounded by beings with the power to destroy their world and kill them all with the twitch of a finger. It is no fault of theirs, of course.” Nicodemus shrugged. “They are simply…limited. Very, very limited. Hello, Dresden.”

“You’re playing the creepy vibe a little hard,” I said. “Might as well go for broke, put on a black top hat and pipe in some organ music.”

He laughed quietly. It didn’t sound evil as much as it did rich and supremely confident. “There’s some irregularity with the meeting, I take it?”

Kincaid glanced at me and nodded.

“Local law enforcement wishes a representative to be present,” I said.

Nicodemus’s head tilted. “Really? Who?”

“Does it matter?” Kincaid asked, his tone bored. “The Archive is willing to permit it, if you have no objections.”

Nicodemus turned all the way around finally. I couldn’t see his expression, just his outline against the tank. His shadow, meanwhile, kept circling the room behind the shark. “Two conditions,” he said.

“Go on,” Kincaid said.

“First, that the representative be unarmed, and that the Archive guarantee his neutrality in the absence of factors that conflict with matters of law-enforcement duty.”

Kincaid glanced at me. Murphy wouldn’t like the “unarmed” part, but she’d do it. If nothing else, she wouldn’t want to back down in front of me—or maybe Kincaid.

But I had to wonder, what was Nicodemus’s problem with an armed cop? Guns did not bother the man. Not even a little. Why that stipulation?

I nodded at Kincaid.

“Excellent,” Nicodemus said. “Second…” He walked forward, each footstep sounding clearly upon the marble floors, until we could see him in the nearest floorlights. He was a man of medium height and build, his features handsome, strong, his eyes dark and intelligent. Hints of silver graced his immaculate hair, though he was holding up pretty well for a man of two thousand. He wore a black silk shirt, dark pants, and what could have been mistaken for a grey Western tie at his throat. It wasn’t. It was an old, old rope from the same field as his coin. “Second,” he said, “I want five minutes alone with Dresden.”

“No offense, Nick,” I said, “but that’s about five minutes longer than I want to spend with you.”

“Exactly,” he replied, smiling. It was the kind of smile you see at country clubs and in boardrooms and on crocodiles. “There’s really never a good opportunity for us to have a civilized conversation. I’m seizing the chance for a chat.” He gestured at the building around us. “Sans demolition, if you think you can refrain.”

I scowled at him.

“Mister Archleone,” Kincaid said, “are you offering a peace bond? If so, the Archive will hold you to it.”

“I offer no such thing,” Nicodemus said without looking away from me. “Dresden would count it as worthless coin, and his is the only opinion that really matters in this particular situation.” He spread his hands. “A talk, Dresden. Five minutes. I assure you, if I wished to do you harm, even the Hellhound’s reputation”—he paused deliberately to glance at Kincaid with naked contempt in his gaze—“would not make me hesitate for an instant. I would have killed you already.”

Kincaid gave Nicodemus a chill little smile, and the air boiled with potential violence.

I held up a hand and said quietly, “Easy there, Wild Bill. I’ll talk with him. Then we’ll have our sit-down. All nice and civilized.”

Kincaid glanced at me and arched a shaggy, dark-gold eyebrow. “You sure?”

I shrugged a shoulder.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He paused, then added, “If either of you initiates violence outside of the strictures of a formal duel, you’ll be in violation of the Accords. In addition, you will have offered an insult to the reputation and integrity of the Archive—which I will take personal action to amend.”

The wintry chill in his blue eyes was mostly for Nicodemus, but I got some of it too. Kincaid meant it, and I’d seen him in action before. He was one of the scarier people I knew; the more so because he went about matters with ruthless practicality, unhindered by personal ego or the pride one often encountered in the supernatural set. Kincaid wouldn’t care if he looked into my eyes as he killed me, if that was what he set out to do. He’d be just as happy to put a bullet through my head from a thousand meters away, or wire a bomb to my car and read about my death on the Internet the next morning. Whatever got the job done.

That kind of attitude doesn’t help you when it comes to finding flashy or dramatic ways to do away with your enemies, but what it lacks in aesthetics it makes up in economy. Marcone, whom this whole mess was about, worked the same way, and it had taken him far. You crossed such men at
extreme
peril.

Nicodemus let out another quiet, charming laugh. He didn’t look impressed by Kincaid. Maybe that was a good thing. Too much pride can kill a man.

On the other hand, from what I’d seen of him, maybe Nicodemus really
was
that tough.

“Run along, Hellhound,” Nicodemus said. “Your mistress’s honor is quite safe.” He drew an X on his chest. “Cross my heart.”

Maybe it was an inside reference. Kincaid’s eyes flashed with something hot and furious before they went glacial again. He nodded to me, then precisely the same way to Nicodemus, and left.

I’m pretty sure the room didn’t actually become darker and scarier and more threatening when I was left alone with the most dangerous man I’d ever crossed.

But it sure felt that way.

Nicodemus turned that toothy predator’s smile to me as his shadow began to glide around the walls of the entry hall. Circling me. Like a shark.

“So, Harry,” he said, walking closer, “what shall we talk about?”

Chapter Twenty-nine

“Y
ou’re the one who wanted a conversation,” I said. “And don’t call me Harry. My friends call me Harry.”

He turned one hand palm up. “And who is to say I cannot be your friend?”

“That would be me, Nick. I say. Here, I’ll show you.” I enunciated: “You can’t be my friend.”

“If I am to call you Dresden, it is only fair that you should call me Archleone.”

“Archleone?” I asked. “As in ‘seeking whom he may devour’? Kinda pretentious, isn’t it?”

For half of a second, the smile turned into something almost genuine. “For a godless heathen, you are entirely too familiar with scripture. You know that I can kill you, do you not?”

“We’d make a mess,” I said. “And who knows? I might get lucky.”

Really, really, really lucky.

Nicodemus moved a hand in acknowledgment. “But barring luck.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you offer such insouciance regardless?”

“Habit,” I said. “It doesn’t make you special or anything, believe me.”

“Oh, I picked the right coin for you.” He started to walk in a slow circle around me, the way you might a car at the dealership. “There are rumors that a certain Warden has been flinging Hellfire at his foes. How do you like it?”

“I’d like it better if it came in Pine Fresh and New Car instead of only Rotting Egg,” I said.

Nicodemus completed his circuit of me and arched an eyebrow. “You haven’t taken up the coin.”

“I would, but it’s in my piggybank,” I said, “and I can’t break the piggy, obviously. He’s too cute.”

“Lasciel’s shadow must be slipping,” Nicodemus said, shaking his head. “It has had years to reason with you, and still you refuse our gifts.”

“What with the curly little tail and the big, sad brown eyes,” I said, as if he hadn’t said anything.

One of his heels hit the ground with unnecessary force, and he stopped walking. He inhaled through his nose and out again. “Definitely the proper coin for you.” He folded his hands carefully behind his back. “Dresden, you have a skewed image of us. We were operating at cross-purposes the first time we met, and you probably learned everything you know about us from Carpenter and his cohorts. The Church has always had excellent propaganda.”

“Actually, the murder, torture, and destruction you and your people perpetrated spoke pretty loudly all by themselves.”

Nicodemus rolled his eyes. “Dresden, please. You have done all of those things at one time or another. Poor Cassius told me all about what you did to him in the hotel room.”

“Gosh,” I said, grinning. “If someone had walked in on us in the middle of that sentence, would my face be red or what?”

He stared at me for a second, and the emotion and expression drained out of his features like dewdrops vanishing under a desert sunrise. What was left behind was little more than desolation. “Harry Dresden,” he said, so softly that I could barely make it out. “I admire your defiance of greater powers than your own. I always have. But
tempus fugit
. For all of us.”

I blinked.

For all of us?
What the hell did he mean by that?

“Have you not seen the signs around you?” Nicodemus asked. “Beings acting against their natures? Creatures behaving in ways that they should not? The old conventions and customs being cast aside?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re talking about the Black Council.”

He tilted his head slightly to one side. Then his mouth twitched at a corner and he nodded his head very slightly. “They move in shadows, manipulate puppets. Some of them may be on your Council, yes. As good a name as any.”

“Stop playing innocent,” I spat at him. “I saw the leftovers of the Black Council attack on Arctis Tor. I know what Hellfire smells like. One of yours was in on it.”

Nicodemus.

Blinked.

Then he surged forward—fast. So fast that by the time I’d registered that he was moving, my back had already hit the wall that had been twenty feet behind me. He hadn’t been trying to hurt me. If he had, the back of my head would have splattered open. He just pinned me there against the wall with one hand on my throat, tighter and harder than a steel vise.

“
What
?” he demanded, his voice still a whisper. His eyes, though, were very wide. Both sets of them. A second set, these glowing faintly green, had opened just above his eyebrows—Anduriel’s, I presumed.

“Ack,” I said. “Glarghk.”

His arm quivered for a second, and then he lowered his eyelids until they were almost closed. A moment later he very, very slowly relaxed his arm, allowing me to breathe again. My throat burned, but air came in, and I wheezed for a second or two while he stepped back from me.

I glared up at him and debated slamming him through one of those Corinthian columns by way of objecting to being manhandled. But I decided that I didn’t want to piss him off.

Nicodemus’s lips moved, but an entirely different voice issued from them—something musical, lyrical, and androgynous. “At least it has
some
survival instinct.”

Nicodemus shook his head as if buzzed by a mosquito and said, “Dresden, speak.”

“I’m not your friend,” I said, my voice rough. “I’m not your damned dog, either. Conversation over.” I took a few steps to one side so that I could move around him without taking my eyes off him, and started to leave.

“Dresden,” Nicodemus said. “Stop.”

I kept walking.

I was almost out of the room before he spoke again, resignation in his tone. “Please.”

I paused, without turning around.

“I…reacted inappropriately. Especially for this venue. I apologize.”

“Huh,” I said, and looked over my shoulder. “Now I wish I
had
brought Michael. He’d have fainted.”

“Your friend and his brethren are tools of an organization with its own agenda, and they always have been,” Nicodemus said. “But that’s not the issue here.”

“No,” I said. “The issue is Marcone.”

Nicodemus waved a hand. “Marcone is an immediate matter. There are long-term issues in play.”

I turned to face him and sighed. “I think you’re probably full of crap. But okay, I’ll bite. What long-term issues?”

“Those surrounding the activities of your Black Council,” Nicodemus said. “Are you
certain
you saw evidence of Hellfire in use at the site of the attack on Arctis Tor?”

“Yes.” I didn’t add the word
dummy
. Who says I ain’t diplomatic?

Nicodemus’s fingers flexed into the shape of claws and then relaxed again. He pursed his lips. “Interesting. Then the only question is if the contamination is among standing members of our Order or…” He let the thought trail off and glanced at me, lifting an eyebrow.

I followed the logic to the only other people in possession of any of the coins. “Someone in the Church,” I whispered, with a sick feeling in my stomach.

“Historically speaking, we get about half of the coins back that way,” Nicodemus noted. “What would you say if I told you that you and I might have a great many common interests in the future?”

“I wouldn’t say much of anything,” I said. “I’d be too busy laughing in your face.”

Nicodemus shook his head. “Shortsighted. You can’t afford that. Come with me for a week and see if you feel the same way when we’re done.”

“Even assuming I was stupid enough to go anywhere with you for an hour, much less a week, I saw how you treated Cassius. I’m not real eager to slide my nameplate onto his office door.”

“He didn’t adjust to the times,” Nicodemus replied with a shrug. “I wouldn’t have been doing him any favors by coddling him. We live in a dangerous world, Dresden. One adapts and thrives or one dies. Living on the largesse of others is nothing but parasitism. I respected Cassius too much to let him devolve to that.”

“Gosh, you’re chatty,” I said. “You were right. This is so much fun. It’s almost like…”

A horrible thought hit me.

Nicodemus was many things, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew I wasn’t going to sign on for his team. Not after the way he treated me the last time we’d met. He knew that nothing he said was going to sway me. I might have surprised him with that little nugget of information about Arctis Tor, but that could have been an act, too. All in all, odds were high that this conversation was accomplishing absolutely nothing, and Nicodemus had to know that.

So why was he having it? I asked myself.

Because the goal of the conversation doesn’t have anything to do with the subject or the context of the conversation
, I answered.

He wasn’t here to talk to me about anything or convince me of anything.

He wanted to talk to me and keep me
here
.

Which meant that something else was about to happen somewhere else.

Wheels within wheels.

My God, it was a metaphor.

This
conversation
was a metaphor for the parley as a whole. Nicodemus hadn’t come to talk to us about violations of the Accords. He’d
engineered
the parley, and his motivation had nothing to do with subverting Marcone’s talents to the service of a Fallen angel.

He was after bigger game.

I whipped my staff toward Nicodemus, slamming my will through it in a surge of panicked realization, screaming “
Forzare!
” as I did. Unseen force lifted him from his feet and slammed him into one of the huge Corinthian columns like a cannonball. Stone shattered with a deafening crash like thunder, and a lot of rock started to fall.

I didn’t stick around to see how much. It wouldn’t kill him. I only hoped it would slow him down enough for me to get to the others.

“Kincaid!” I shouted as I ran. My voice boomed through the empty halls in the wake of the collapsing rubble. “Kincaid!”

I knew I had only seconds before all Hell broke loose.

“Kincaid, get the kid out of here!” I screamed.
“They’re coming for Ivy!”